(NBC) — Friday on “Dateline,” nearly 40 years after young wife and mother Cathy Krauseneck is found murdered with an axe in her upstate New York home, a new team of investigators joins the cold case to uncover the killer.
Here is a preview of Andrea Canning’s report:
A blanket of snow covered the ground that cold morning. February 19, 1982. Here on this quiet street called Del Rio Drive, winter temperatures hovered just above freezing. Windows were shut tight, furnaces turned up.
Around 6:30 a.m., James Krauseneck, a businessman at Kodak, left his house and headed to work in downtown Rochester, New York. His 3-year-old daughter Sara and his wife Cathy were still in bed.
Later that day, a close friend, Gloria Winkowski, planned to drive them to a doctor’s appointment.
GLORIA WINKOWSKI: I tried calling her all day and there was no answer at her house.
ANDREA CANNING: Did you think that maybe James just ended up taking her to the doctor?
GLORIA WINKOWSKI: By 5 o’clock I figured, “Oh, he musta taken her.”
That’s around the time James Krauseneck arrived back home, only to make a horrific discovery. He ran to the house across the street where a neighbor called 9-1-1.
911 CALL OPERATOR: Brighton police, hello?
NEIGHBOR: There’s been — I think a murder, uh, across the street.
OPERATOR: OK. Calm down now. What happened?
NEIGHBOR: I don’t know. Her husband’s here and he can’t even talk. She’s in her bed, and she — please. Um, hurry.
That’s an all-new “Dateline” airing Friday on NBC4 at 9 p.m.
